Last week my girls and I were playing and I decided to sing to them for entertainment- for me, mostly. I'd sung "Happy Family" about a hundred times, so I was desperate to think of new material. I found myself singing
Everywhere we go
the people want to know
who we are
so we tell 'em*
We are the Tigers!
The mighty, mighty Tigers!
And if they can't hear us
We sing a little louder!l
I was trying to think of where I'd picked up the song. Then I got it- my dad's high school mascot was the Tiger. Wow. History repeats, and this is how kids end up singing their grandpa's high school fight song.
These last few months I've been surprised how much life has changed with being a mom. I feel much more included in the community. People constantly come up to talk with us, and everyone is so much more friendly. Even at church, the other women will talk with me much more, and we actually have things to talk about- kids! I've never missed being told I should have kids.
A few weeks ago John and I went up to Boston to visit Mona and Bryant again. I think this was my favorite visit with them ever. Now that we all have kids, we all have even more in common, and there is more entertainment.
This weekend John and I went into NYC to meet up with a few of John's former classmates to celebrate the Chinese New Year. They are also mothers of infants so, interspersed with discussing the latest news on Wall Street, we enjoyed mom and dads with MBAs from fancy schools crawling on the floor playing with trains and pushing buttons on plastic cars.
And we laugh more. If we join the unemployed crowd, which includes about half of our friends, hopefully we can enjoy our girls rather than feeling frustrated as in our unemployed days of the last recession.
*I may have misremembered this. In New England they probably would have used a more "propa" word such as "them", unless this was done for poetic reasons.